A “Green island'' at sea of recession? Polish economy during the crisis in comparison with other member States of the European Union

Abstract

The economic and debt crisis, the scale of which revealed in 2008-2009 (and the causes of which grew earlier), affected mainly the United States and member states of the European Union. This crisis is the deepest and longest economic downturn since the so-called “Great Depression’’ of the 30's of the twentieth century. It had a very profound political, economic and social impact. In almost all EU’s member states we have to deal, among others, with the economic recession, the deficit of the public finance sector, the increase of the public debt, rising unemployment and a decline of the average level of wealth of societies.

      The state of the EU, which in terms of economic growth is an exception, and that is the only in which we had not the recession during the crisis, is Poland . Therefore, the aim of the article is to present the Polish economy during the crisis compared to the other EU’s member states and to identify and briefly analyze factors that, so far, allowed Poland to maintain positive economic growth. In addition, in the first part of the article, there are briefly showed the causes of the crisis – first the general, then these specific for the EU’s member states. In the article there are also pointed out the most important activities of the EU’s institutions which are to reform the Economic and Monetary Union and to alleviate the results of the crisis.